Paul Leicester Ford Madness and on to the Next Step of My Research.

This morning at the Library was fairly exciting for me. When I was doing some research about an acquaintance of TJ’s, I had to go to the Reference Section to get Vol. 9 of Paul Leicester Ford’s set on his writings when I noticed that this set was practically the only one that the Library did not have a copy of in circulation. This was where the adventure began, as somehow I had made my way to Amazon.com and stumbled upon recently published paperbacks of volumes 5, 9, and 10. Awesome! So I relayed my exciting find to Anna, only to discover that we would not find any solid information on a publisher or on where to find the other 7 volumes of the set in paperback either. So we set off trying to find information on the proper publisher. A simple Google search took us to many websites that didn’t seem like they would be the responsible party for publishing these fine volumes, as most of them were either Art book publishers, disconnected websites, or a profile in some form or another of the Art book publisher’s website.

I’m sure that we had spent a good 20 minutes trying to clear this hurdle, when it occurred to me that perhaps the information would be in one of the cover or title page images on Amazon. After getting back to the page that started these shenanigans, I promptly checked the back cover and, low and behold, there it was! Had we only changed the domain, we certainly would’ve stumbled on the rightful publisher at Hardpress.net. Apparently, in addition to re-printing the Ford set, they publish some American classics and hard-to-find titles, as well as government titles like the 9/11 Commission Report. Fantastic! So now I feel as if I’ve contributed a fairly productive tip for the Library, and now we may finally see some circulating copies of the wonderful Paul Leicester Ford edited set of Jefferson writings. Yay! 🙂